Lumberjacks and Lumberjills

I'm a bit late at showing you this, but I've been so excited about it for months now!  So here's the big reveal - my illustration for Ammo magazine's gorgeous special edition 'The Lumberjack's illustrated guide to wood cutting'.

The magazine's fantastic.  Full to the brim with really talented illustrators showing their wares.  It's especially exciting with this issue as it's twice the size than normal, has a free letterpress print by Nick Deakin/Blush Publishing and the illustrators have brought a ton of unusual interpretations of the theme into it.

I had been considering illustrating some of the WWII Lumberjills (Women's Timber Corps, an offshoot of the Women's Land Army) for a fair while before I was invited to take part in this issue.  They really sparked my interest as they played a truly fundamental role in history, but are often overlooked.  Hell, I searched google and couldn't find a single illustration celebrating them and the work they did.  So it was great that they could fit in so nicely with the given theme for this Ammo issue, but be a bit unusual at the same time.

I'd also just taken a trip to Scotland and in fact very nearby to some of the locations that the Lumberjills worked. I felt oh-so-inspired by the stunning mountainous scenery and forests (and yes, I climbed the Ben Nevis mountain!).  I'm sure you can feel that influence in the illustration.

I'm sure you're all aware that I enjoy drawing ladies, and these two in particular are some of my favourites.  They just look so damn cool (well, and proud, tough, patriotic and stylish in their work uniforms!). Don't you just want to be friends with them?! I tried to keep the costuming as close to the actual uniforms as possible, it was a nice change for me to be able to work from some solid historical reference.

Here's a few of my favourites from the issue by some very talented folks ( TL - BR:  Katherine Tromans, James Shedden, Ed J Brown, James Burlinson) -

You can get yourself a copy of the magazine here!
Definitely go and have a lunchtime read about the Lumberjills too, it's really interesting.

Speak soon, Emmeline.